Sealable polymeric packages, such as trash bags, are a common household item. The bags come to the consumer in the form of a roll of interconnected bags or as pre-separated bags housed in a dispensing box. When the bags are provided in the form of a roll, one end of the bag, the bottom, is thermally sealed closed and connected to its neighboring bag along a perforated line; the other end of the bag, the open mouth end, is attached to its neighboring bag solely along another perforated line. When the bags are pre-separated, neighboring bags are generally overlapped or interweaved in such a manner that removal of one bag from the dispensing box draws the neighboring bag toward an opening in the box.
In order to close a typical polymeric bag after it has been filled by the consumer, the bag body adjacent the open mouth end of the bag is gathered and tied into a knot or secured using a separate tie member supplied by the vendor of the bags. Tie members typically include paper coated flexible wires, rubber bands, or strips of plastic having a locking mechanism to provide a means to pull tight and securely fasten the neck of the bag. The need for separate tie members, however, adds an additional cost factor for the manufacturer, and ultimately, the consumer. In addition, separate tie members are easily lost and hence can be a nuisance for the consumer. Polymeric packages having integral closure systems overcome these problems. Such integral closure systems can be in the form of tie members, adhesives and the like.
One particularly advantageous closure system is a drawtape or drawstring that is integral to the bag body. Bags of this type are typically in the form of a pair of pliable thermoplastic body panels joined to each other along a pair of opposing sides and a bottom bridging the opposing sides. The bag may be opened along a mouth end formed opposite the bottom. The body panels form a hem along the mouth end of the bag, and the hem houses a pliable thermoplastic drawtape. One or more drawtape holes located within the hem expose the drawtape allowing it to be pulled through the holes to close the bag and to be used as a handle.
When consumers use a drawtape bag as a liner for a trash container, the bag body is inserted into the trash container such that the bag body generally extends downward into the trash container. The mouth end of the bag, including the hem, is drawn over and loosely mounted around an upper portion of the trash container. Heretofore, a shortcoming of such drawtape bags has been that the mouth end of the bag might fall back into the trash container, especially when consumers discard trash into the bag. This can be a nuisance for the consumer, who must then lift the mouth end of the bag out of the trash container and around the upper portion thereof. If the consumer does not notice that the mouth end of the bag has fallen into the trash container, the consumer might discard trash that is not captured by the drawtape bag but rather contacts and possibly sullies the inside wall of the trash container. This defeats the purpose of the bag, which is to serve as a liner for the trash container.